Good-bye, Howard

News of long-time Daily New theatre critic Howard Kissel's death is all over the internet today- the Daily News, Times, Playbill, WQXR, etc.
I was not a friend of his, but I knew him from the time that I worked at the Theatre Development Fund, where he was on the Board of Directors. Howard had read a play of mine for a workshop slot (I think it was the Vassar summer program); I didn't get the slot. But he liked the play and told me so. After I left TDF, I would run into him once in awhile at the Strand (no chance mistaking him for someone else).
So maybe he wasn't the greatest prose stylist in print. But Howard Kissel was an unpretentious, approachable mensch, and he really loved the theatre. It's sad that he's gone.